


The True and the Possible

by CatalpaWaltz



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, M/M, Pre-OT3, authority issues, what we have here is a failure to communicate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-17 14:33:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4670225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatalpaWaltz/pseuds/CatalpaWaltz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Napoleon ends up outranking his teammates on a technicality, and while Gaby has no problem turning the whole thing into a joke, Illya's response is altogether unexpected. It takes a botched mission in Morocco for his partners to learn why. </p><p>TW for oblique references to human trafficking and past abuse suffered by a main character.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The True and the Possible 

 

Waverly looks as peeved about it as Gaby feels. He sets a stack of files down on his desk with just a bit more force than is necessary, which Gaby supposes is one way of saying "I am going to fucking regret this" in stiff-upper-lip speak. 

What he actually says is "just don't let it go to your head, Solo." 

The American's face is unreadable, all business. 

"Of course, sir." 

And that itself is the reddest of red flags. Solo never calls anyone "sir" unless he has some scheme brewing. She'd call it one of his many tells, but such an accusation might well break his heart. 

Illya doesn't seem to have any reaction to the news that, officially speaking, he and Gaby now report to directly Solo, who will in turn report to Waverly. 

"Just a formality," Waverly had assured them. "All of our teams are being similarly restructured. One of the higher-ups just couldn't seem to be able to keep up with all their paperwork, every agent sending in their own take on every situation, so here we are." 

Formality or not, she's not looking forward to the inevitable collision that must ensue the first time Solo decides to lord his new rank over them. 

But the collision never comes.

The handful of missions that follow are unusually...subdued. It's not because they're undemanding, which they are not, but there's been an almost imperceptible shift in their working dynamic that she can't quite place. 

Solo does lord his status over them, but never for real. It's one more button for him to push, one more way to needle and cajole and talk nonsense when he just has to fill the vast silences that come part and parcel with their line of work. Gaby has no problem rising to the bait when she feels like it, when the quiet and the stillness nearly drive her as crazy as they drive him. That Illya simply chooses not to do the same is entirely unsurprising. She knows he doesn't mind silence, that he welcomes it, in fact. And she supposes it's a sign of growth that he seems so much less susceptible to Solo's taunts now than he used to be, when the tides of his temper were as predictable as the sun and stars. 

When Illya does get in on the joke, though, it's in a way that makes her a little uneasy. 

Solo's laying out the play-by-play for a solid night's worth of work, blueprints laid out across the coffee table in their hotel room. When he's finished going over the plan, he looks up at his partners. 

"You two got all that?" he says. 

Gaby nods. 

"Understood," says Illya, tonelessly. 

Solo smirks, cocks an eyebrow. 

"What was that? Understood..." he prompts mockingly, drawing out the final syllable. 

"Understood, sir." 

Gaby blinks. She knows Illya's just playing along, just indulging Solo in his game, but she waits for the twitch to come into the corner of Illya's mouth, the long-suffering sigh, the roll of the eyes...and they don't come. 

Solo's feeling it too, she can tell, the tightness in his jaw giving him away. But she soon shrugs the whole thing off. 

Russian humor, she supposes. Something lost in translation. 

But then comes the mission in Rabat. 

There's a former diplomatic attache, one Georgescu out of the Romanian consulate in Paris, who they've been tasked to hunt down. Waverly thinks he might be in some way connected to a series of bombings in Budapest that have set the tongues of every explosives expert in Europe wagging, and U.N.C.L.E. would very much like to learn everything they can about the new tech (not nuclear, but very very nasty) before it rears its head again elsewhere. Or, better yet, actually keep the knowledge from being sold off. 

There's very little chance of that happening, they all know, so Waverly doesn't make it a part of their mandate. But they also all know what the best-case scenario looks like here, and they'd like to achieve it if they can. 

So that, in the end, might be the reason that their investigation of their new mark is carried out with even greater thoroughness than they can usually manage on the tight schedules within which they work. And why they learn things about him that, in the grand scheme, it might have been better for them not to know. 

It's Illya himself who happens upon the first piece of evidence in the ever-expanding puzzle -- a handful of financial documents with curious tales to tell once he reads between the lines. A little more digging, a dab of breaking and entering, and a few dozen phone calls regarding Georgescu's apparent clientele paint an increasingly grim picture. Georgescu has indeed been looking after himself, but unlike Napoleon, it's not stolen art he's selling. 

Solo urges patience. They can go after Georgescu's "business interests" the moment he's placed in U.N.C.L.E. custody, but to do so beforehand would blow their covers sky high. He expects Illya and Gaby both to argue, he expects a debate that will rage late into the night, one that might (he dearly hopes) inspire them into crafting some alternate plan, where they can solve this problem without creating any new ones. But while Gaby initially lets him have it, she has no real ideas for addressing the issue. Illya, to Solo's astonishment, says nothing. 

It takes considerably more whiskey than usual for Solo to quiet his conscience and lull himself to sleep that night, but sleep he does. Eventually. 

\---------

He's shaken to wakefulness by a small, firm hand on his shoulder. The sun's already risen to shine through the chink in his curtains, and he feels it all the way to the back of his skull. 

"Illya's gone," she says. "I've been waiting an hour and a half and he hasn't come back." 

"Shit," hisses Napoleon, bolting upright. 

He gathers his thoughts as he dresses, and instead of hitting the pavement and dragging his partner back into line by the collar of his hideous turtleneck, he makes a few calls. 

He's never worked Rabat before, so all his contacts are either U.N.C.L.E, or out-of-the-loop CIA operatives who haven't yet gotten wise to the fact that they probably shouldn't be taking his calls. But despite the fact that he'd rather get this kind of information from people he considers friends, the picture they paint for him is one he has absolutely no problem believing. 

One person tells him about a fire in the Old Quarter, an ancient, rundown dump of a house that went up in smoke about three in the morning. Another gives him a story he got from his landlady just an hour before, about a great blonde giant trooping through the neighborhood in the hours before dawn with a pack of children at his heels, and at least two in his arms. A few of them had been taken in by her sister, frightened little slips of things, she'd said.

Solo hangs up the phone and turns to Gaby, who'd commandeered the hotel's second line. 

"He found Georgescu's 'warehouse,'" he says, spitting out the last word with unrestrained disgust. 

"At least he didn't go to the police," says Gaby helpfully. It's not much of a comfort, however. Obviously Peril wouldn't take the matter to the police; he's been in the field far too long to make that kind of mistake. 

"Don't think it did much good," he sighs. "The story's gotten around so fast he'd probably be recognized in Marrakech by now." 

Gaby frowns, and Solo digs the pads of his thumbs into his temples, trying to focus. Their cover had kept them together this time, three archaeologists from Columbia attending a conference, and they'd shown their faces as a trio all over town. In retrospect, probably not the best decision. 

"You think he's in the wind? Georgescu?" Gaby asks.

One final phone call answers that question. Georgescu, Solo is not at all shocked to learn, is dead. 

He actually makes it to the crime scene before the police have a chance to clear the place. The man is sprawled on the floor of his study, face up, 

"Wallet, gone." says one officer in clipped English. "Safe, empty." The officer gives an indifferent little shrug. Robbery. Simple. 

But Solo knows what he's looking for. He looks down his nose at the corpse of the man he'd been tasked to deliver to Waverly. Georgescu had taken two shots to the gut; not, at first glance, the work of anyone more skilled than a rough-edged thief or a nervous junkie. But Solo knows bullet wounds. He's seen many men escape with their lives after taking hits that instinct said should have been fatal, and he's seen many more killed by shots that seemed like nothing. It's a complex calculus, the damage a bullet can do, and he doesn't know many who have mastered it. But the wounds in Georgescu's stomach, he knows, while they would have meant certain death, would also have given the man as much as several hours of impossible agony before the end. Not the work of a dispassionate assassin, no. Not that. 

The day is growing hot by the time he returns to the hotel. Gaby is sitting in the lobby, fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve. She stands and moves over to him when he comes through the door. 

"He's back. Upstairs," she jerks her chin towards the elevators. "He told me to stay here. He looked..." Solo doesn't need her to finish that sentence. He looked like he was about to put the hurt on a room full of innocent furniture, he imagines, and he didn't want to risk Gaby getting in the way. 

"Give me five minutes," says Solo, "then follow me up."


	2. Chapter 2

The silence that hits Solo when he steps off the elevator is absolute. He'd almost hoped to catch Illya in the middle of one of his episodes, because that at least is something he knows how to handle. That at least would give him some leverage, some kind of high ground to stand on once Illya starts off on him about how utterly _unconscionable_ it is that they were just going to leave those children there (which, Solo reminds himself, they absolutely were not, but he understands Illya's point of view) that they were going to let Georgescu just get away with it. If Illya's feeling shamefaced about trashing yet another respectable hotel room, he's less likely to try and take his frustrations out on Solo himself. At least, that's the idea. 

But he doesn't exactly fancy coming upon Illya just at the end of one of his rages, when the red haze has cleared from his vision but the fever is not yet past, when his hands start itching for something to break that will actually put up a fight first. It hadn't escaped Solo's notice how cool and collected Illya had been leaving the racetrack that day, after having his fun with Count Lippi and his "soft bones." Overturning a table or smashing a vase had to be a poor substitute. 

So he very deliberately makes his presence known before he reaches the door of the suite: a heavier footfall, a few overdramatic sighs. He doesn't know what he will find when he opens the door, but catching his partner by surprise would likely be a very bad idea. 

It is nothing like he expects, but that doesn't mean it's better. 

There's not so much as a throw pillow out of place. Instead, Illya is standing ramrod-straight in the dead center of the room, his eyes on the door and his hands clasped behind his back. His chin is lifted, and at first Solo thinks he's just standing at attention (though why is a mystery all its own) but there's something off about the whole thing. It's a pose that ought to make him look positively defiant, all of that towering height and coiled power held in readiness. But the angles are wrong. He looks at Illya, and maybe it's the few inches his partner has on him, but all he sees is the pale expanse of his neck, open and exposed, hinting at the underlying fragile architecture of tendon, bone, and vein. 

He feels a little sick to his stomach. 

"So, what was in the safe? Anything useful?" he asks, seeing no other course but a swerve into an unexpected question. Misdirection, he thinks. What other way does he know how to work? 

Illya hesitates before he answers. Napoleon can see him swallow, settle further into his stance. 

"The papers are there." He nods towards the coffee table. "Some are in Hungarian, which I cannot read, but they might have something to do with the bomb." 

It's less than he'd hoped for. And it's all they're going to be able to give Waverly. It's not as though Napoleon can read Hungarian either, so even if this mission didn't turn out a complete failure they likely won't be able to find out for days. 

"That's not likely to satisfy the boss," says Napoleon. He isn't sure, but he think Illya goes a little pale at that. If it's possible, he stands up even straighter. 

"I know." 

The silence stretches between them. For once, Napoleon thinks he can try to wait it out, get Peril to be the one to break the stalemate by saying whatever it is he has to say, whatever it is that's kept him tied up in knots for the last few weeks. But there's clearly some other impulse working on Illya now, something more lasting, if more brittle, than his own drive to know what his partner is thinking. And he's never been able to endure an awkward silence. 

"Alright, that's it," he snaps. "What the hell is going on here? What's wrong with you?" 

It comes out harsher than he had intended, and Illya's reaction is unmistakeable now to Napoleon's trained eye. He sees the shiver that goes through his partner's spine, the twitch in the corded muscles of his arms that shows he's clasping his hands tighter now. 

"I compromised the mission," says Illya. "I have no excuse." 

"I'm not talking about the mission. I'm not interested in arguing about that with you. In fact, I don't think I _can_ argue about that with you, since on principle I agree with everything you did. I'm talking about _this_ ," he says, gesturing to the space between them, hoping that Illya understands. 

"I'm sorry," says Illya, and it's like a punch to Napoleon's gut to realize that he _means_ it, that the sarcastic edge that sharpens every single one of Illya's "apologies" to him is utterly absent. "I don't know what you mean." 

Something is very, very wrong. 

"Peril, sit down," he says, though something about the nickname feels unsuitable for the moment. "Please," he adds, as an afterthought, but Illya is already moving before he says the word. He takes a seat on one of the damask-upholstered chairs opposite the couch, the precise angle of his back entirely unchanged. Napoleon, for his part, would rather relax a little. The sofa is very nice, plush and inviting and all sort of other salacious adjectives, and he is very tired. But he too sits up straight. 

"Ok," says Napoleon. "Let's start from the beginning. If you were planning on taking out Georgescu yourself, why didn't you say anything?" 

"You would have tried to stop me." 

"But yesterday," says Napoleon, pressing on, "you didn't have a word to say about it. I said we should wait, finish the mission first...I thought you actually agreed with me. Which was horrible, by the way. Please don't ever do that again." 

Illya doesn't answer Napoleon's impish grin with one of his own. 

"I...I hadn't yet decided what to do." 

"Bullshit. You made up your mind the minute you figured out what Georgescu was up to. But what I can't figure out is why you were so determined to go it alone."

Illya frowns, puzzled. It hasn't escape Napoleon's notice that his partner isn't meeting his eyes, that his gaze is falling somewhere in the vicinity of Napoleon's knees. 

"Because you said. Mission first."

Because he _said_? Since when has that been enough to motivate Illya to do anything? 

"I know what I said, Peril. I'm trying to figure out what you were thinking." 

"I was...I thought..." Illya is properly floundering now, and Napoleon has the sense that the other man is reading from a script that Napoleon isn't following, that he _can't_ follow, because they seem to be playing on two very different stages. 

"What did you think?" 

"He would have made deal. He would have gone free!" says Illya, rising suddenly to his feet. The moment the words come out he looks like he wants to swallow them back down, sink into the carpet, disappear. 

"Yes, he would have. And that's exactly why my plan had been to get the information we needed out of him myself before leaving him to your tender mercies. Getting him chucked in a Moroccan prison would have done just as well." 

It's a lie. He had no idea what he was actually going to do when they got their hands on Georgescu. He feels bad about that, for a split second, but he knows Illya in this state isn't likely to pick up on the deception and he has to bring this conversation onto a more stable footing. 

"It was?" 

"Yes, it was. Or it would have been if you had been at all interested in discussing the matter _yesterday_ when we still had options, instead of being a goddamn Lone Ranger and faking a break-in and staging a rescue mission by yourself! Now what do you have to say?" 

"Nothing," says Illya after a beat, eyes now firmly planted on the floor. "But that I accept full responsibility for my actions." 

And here Napoleon decides to take a risk. He begins to approach his partner, slowly, but not tentatively. Not like he's trying to calm a spooked animal, just taking this time. He puts a little authority into the angle of his shoulders. He gets Illya's chin between his thumb and forefinger, and tilts it upward until they're making eye contact again. 

Then he raises his other hand, still moving with a deliberate slowness that he knows will infuse the gesture with a sense of power, of surety. He swings it back, aims the blow, and prays that Illya reaches out to stop it before it lands. 

He doesn't. 

The explosive _crack_ that resounds through the room charges the air like a bolt of lightning. Illya flinches, but does nothing. Says nothing. His eyes are once again trained on the carpet. 

"Jesus _Christ_ ," whispers Solo. 

He can feel the pieces coming together now, every curious episode from the last few weeks slotting neatly into place on the scaffold of this terrible new understanding. 

It feels silly and naive to say so, but Solo has always known that Illya was different, was deeply out of place in his organization. He's comfortable with violence, certainly, but he doesn't seem to thrive on cruelty the way that Solo has seen in other men of their kind. For Illya, violence is a matter of utility. He'll do his job. He'll even knock a few teeth out of some useless aristocrats if he needs to settle his nerves. But he doesn't enjoy it, not for its own sake. Solo thinks back to some of the things he's seen in the War and since, he thinks of the depths to which he's seen men fall, and he knows this is not who Illya is. 

But then he thinks of some of the things Illya has done. For all he likes to chide Napoleon about his lack of spy craft, and for all the skill Illya himself clearly possesses in that vein, Napoleon knows how Illya's previous handlers chose to deploy their greatest asset. The "thing" that charged after him down the darkened streets of East Berlin was not a covert intelligence operative, but a bloodhound. A guided missile. A knife in the dark. 

What had they had to do, Solo wonders, to keep that knife sharp? To keep the hound from biting the hand that fed it? 

All these thoughts come and go, and Napoleon is still standing where he is, inches from his partner. He returns his hand to Illya's face, cupping his jaw, feeling the pulse jump beneath his fingertips. He feels a sudden rush of violent sympathy well up within him, an irrepressible rage of his own that seizes a heart unused to such powerful sentiment and makes his chest actually ache. 

But this is something else in which he and Illya differ substantially. For Napoleon's rages burn cold, and they _last_. He knows, with a cool objectivity, that the people who did this to Illya will pay, somehow. It won't be soon. But when the opportunity arises, he will take it. 

As if of its own will, his hand moves from Illya's jaw, to his neck, into his hair, until Napoleon is cradling the back of Illya's skull. 

"Oh Peril," he sighs, deliberately suffusing his voice with gentleness. "What am I going to do with you?" 

The moment Illya's eyes rise to lock onto his is the same moment that the door behind him swings open. 

\-------

tbc

AN: Apologies for that utterly appalling reference to Mr. Hammer's filmography, but the line wrote itself. I was simply a humble medium. Also, stay tuned for much more Gaby in the next chapter!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be advised that the rating will likely rise in the next chapter.

_Winter, 1953_

Illya comes to right where he knows he will be: in a straight-backed chair, set in the center of a cold, windowless room. He is unrestrained. Calmly, he takes a moment to take an inventory of his injuries. He catalogues the bruises and swelling in his face, but there are no major lacerations and nothing has been broken. A few of his fingers will need to be splinted, but that's something he can take care of himself given a few spare minutes and some rags. There are bruised ribs, maybe one cracked. A single cigarette burn marks his thigh. If he didn't know any better, he would think that he's gotten off easy. 

He knows better. 

Behind him, he hears the squeal and clang of the heavy steel door being thrown open. He resists the urge to flinch; it shows how deep and subtle is their skill at this, that even in making the choice to place his back to the door they feed the anxiety that threatens to take hold of him, the fear that surely overcomes most who endure stays in this room. 

A man in an impeccable grey suit crosses the threshold. Illya has never seen him before. 

"Illya Nikolaevich," he says, without introducing himself. "You have been given a new assignment." A piece of paper is thrown down onto the table in front of him. 

"There is a car waiting for you outside." 

Illya does not rise from his chair at once. He looks down at the piece of paper: it is almost blank, but for three sparse printed lines that float in the center of the cream-colored expanse. A name. An address. One instruction: "Do not arrive before 16:00." 

He thinks, for a wild split-second, about not taking it. He can refuse. He knows that now. It is what has brought him here, but to know that he _can_ is something altogether new. 

But he looks up into the eyes of the man in the suit, and he reads the message there: that there is a price to be paid for what he has done, and it will be paid, one way or another. 

He raids a first aid kit on his way out of the building, then sits in the car for a few minutes before starting the engine, wrapping his broken fingers methodically. He has several hours to make a journey that should only take him one. It might not be inappropriate to make a detour back to his flat, maybe change his clothes, but he rejects that idea. He cannot give himself a chance to change his mind. 

He makes his way out of the city and soon he is in a muted grey world of mills and factory housing. He deliberately misses his turn and continues down the meandering country road he's on until all about him floats a white-and-silver vision of birch woods and tidy little villages. All signs of civilization begin to diminish. The imposing expanse of model farms and the familiar geometries of rural housing developments begin to recede. He's driving East. This road doesn't go terribly far, but it could lead him to others, greater and more enterprising, which pierce straight through the heart of the plains and into the Urals, and then farther. He could keep going, just drive and drive... 

At a railroad crossing he makes a perfect five-point turn and heads back the way he came, but he does not go straight to his destination. This time he meanders through some of the smaller townships, scrupulously keeping just below the speed limit. The black Chaika he's driving is so ridiculously conspicuous it sets his teeth on edge, but it's the very fact of its recognizability that keeps him from getting stopped for being somewhere he has no business being. 

He takes in the signs of life that surround him: women on their way back from the market, children getting released from school. It's just a few days until they break for the New Year's holiday, and there's an air of feverish anticipation that animates the students. He thinks about the things that must occupy their thoughts: the prospect of an escape from their lessons, of the gifts they will receive, of the extravagance of the New Year's feast. Had that been him, once? Had he been so anxious for the pleasures of fireworks and brightly-wrapped chocolates? It must have been so, but he cannot remember the feeling. 

At precisely 16:00, he pulls up a long gravel drive towards a two-story timber frame house. It would have been a quiet country refuge once upon a time, before the sprawl of Moscow reached out its sooty fingers, but miraculously it had escaped demolition in the name of progress. It's still shielded from view of the main road by a thick stand of fir trees. 

As the car comes to a stop, he sees a flash in a first-floor window. A pair of eyes peer out at him from behind a crocheted kitchen curtain, and disappear. 

He knocks on the door. Almost as soon as his knuckles touch the wood the door is opened to reveal an unremarkable-looking man in a pair of reading glasses and a homespun sweater. Behind him, half-hidden by the kitchen door, stands a stout woman in a flour-dusted apron. 

"Maksim Kuznetsov?" 

The man straightens, lifts his chin, and nods with the careful precision of a stage direction, of something rehearsed. This is a moment he has long expected. All the better, Illya thinks. He can do away with the preliminaries. 

"Please, come with me. " His voice is as gentle as he can make it, his manner calm and polite, but the woman in the hallway is gawking at his wounded face, his towering height, his battered hands. He is still in his slacks and canvas jacket from the day before, and he's painfully conscious of the cigarette burn in the leg of his trousers. 

But Kuznetsov comes quietly, and does not look back. 

"Let us do this quickly," he says, "before my son comes home. I do not wish for him to see this." 

_Of course_ , Illya thinks. _Of course that is what this is really about._

He begins to hurry the man towards the car when he hears the sound of another vehicle coming up the gravel drive. It is another black Chaika, identical to Illya's own. 

The front door opens and out steps the man in the grey suit. 

"I found something that I think belongs to you, Maksim Davidovich," he says, and he opens the back door of the car. 

A young boy, no more than nine or ten, clambers out from the backseat. He's clutching his schoolbag to his chest, but there is no fear in his face. 

"Students these days have to carry such heavy burdens, so many books," drawls Grey Suit. "I thought it best to give him a ride the rest of the way. It wouldn't do for him to arrive home late." 

Kuznetsov blanches. 

"Lyosha, go inside," he says, his voice brittle and ready to break. But the boy is silent, frozen. 

"Kuryakin," says Grey Suit, ignoring both man and son, "there has been a change of plans." 

He pulls a piece of paper from an attache case and holds it up for all to see. 

"We have your signed confession, Maksim Davidovich," he says, his voice loud and commanding, as though he is playing to an audience that Illya cannot see. "There is no longer any need for the judicial system to coddle you at the people's expense." He pulls a Makarov from within his jacket and holds it out grip-first for Illya to take. 

Illya has to fight a sudden wave of nausea. The paper is completely blank. He turns to the boy. 

"Go inside," he says quietly. 

"He will stay where he is," snaps Grey Suit. Then he taps his wristwatch impatiently. "Now, Illya Nikolaevich." 

He pronounces the name loudly, carefully. He wants the boy to hear it, Illya thinks. He wants him to remember. 

He's momentarily tempted to take the gun and turn on Grey Suit. They're alone here, he thinks. No one would know, no one would -- 

Two more vehicles roll up the drive: a third black Chaika, and an ambulance. Illya feels something in his chest constrict. 

He takes a breath, shuts his eyes, and lets his awareness move upwards and outwards until it is as though he is taking in the scene from above, until he can see the whole board, himself and Grey Suit and Kuznetsov and Lyosha nothing but pieces in an unfolding game. 

He sifts through all of the moves he might make next, and lets them play themselves out.

 _Rook to C6_. Illya shoots Grey Suit. Someone else shoots Kuznetsov, then Lyosha, and probably the woman in the house. 

_Knight to E5_. Illya shoots himself. The eventual outcome is the same. 

_Bishop to H3_. He drops the gun, runs for the woods. 

_Queen to B7_. He kills the agents in the front seat of the third Chaika. 

Half a dozen other possibilities flow through his mind, each one weighed and measured in its turn, but every move leads to the same conclusion. Except one. 

_Rook to D5_. Illya shoots Kuznetsov. 

Grey Suit lifts one eyebrow. 

"Checkmate, I think, Agent Kuryakin." 

He looks at the boy, meets his eyes. _Remember my face,_ he thinks. _You deserve to have a face to put to this._

In a flurry of motion he takes the Makarov, aims, and fires twice. He hears Kuznetsov's wife scream from the door to the house. Two white-clad, broad-chested orderlies step from the ambulance to collect the body. He is ushered through the passenger side of one of the Chaikas, and driven away. 

He is not brought back to his spartan little flat on Maroseika street, and he is not given another assignment for some days. Instead, he returns to the windowless room and the straight-backed chair, as his split lip is reopened and his ears ring from the force of blow after blow. 

None of it is necessary, but he endures it all motionlessly, soundlessly. He has finally grasped that which eluded him for so long, the lesson he has taken nearly twenty years to learn. 

When he was very small, he had grumbled to his father that he did not want to learn to play chess, that it was _boring_ and that he would rather be out of doors, chasing and being chased by the stray cats that haunted the streets around their flat or listening to the stories of the kindly old couple who lived the next building over. 

Nikolai Kuryakin had shaken his head, fixed his son with a stern glance.

"Illyusha," he had said, sagely, "you must learn chess, now or later, because one day you will learn that life and chess are one in the same," and Illya had been so impressed with that grand pronouncement that he had sat on his father's knee for hours as he carefully explained each piece on the board and what it did, and Illya had learned the way each one felt in his hand. 

There had been a secret buried in that lesson, he knew even then. He used to think that the thing that bound them together, life and chess, was the Law. He thought his father was trying to show him that even a world of so many rules could still bring forth infinite forms, exquisite beauty. But he had missed the larger truth, the thing that no man wants to have to teach his son, and that was this: 

Life and chess are one in the same, but his is not the hand that moves the pieces. It never was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know precisely nothing about chess and I apologize profusely to anyone who does.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, thank you all so much for your incredibly generous comments. It's really made this story a joy to write.

Spring, 1964.   
Rabat, Morocco. 

Gaby hesitates on the threshold as Illya's hands drop to his sides, his eyes going a little wide. 

"Everything all right in here?" 

Solo swivels, withdrawing his hand from Illya's face and slipping it a little too casually into his trouser pocket. 

"Sure thing. Peril and I were just starting to hash out what we're going to put into _our_ report." 

"Ah," she says. "Right." 

"What do you two propose?" Solo asks, glancing between them. But it's too soon for levity, for the jaunty skip in his voice, and Gaby knows it. 

He thinks he's going to have to stop her from hitting him, or Illya, or both. She's always been the least predictable of their little trio. But she fixes her eyes properly on the two of them, on Illya's one flushed cheek, the look of apology Solo hasn't quite managed to scrub away, and as per usual she's quicker on the uptake. 

But the sharp realization he sees come over her features is replaced at once with the blank mask of duty. 

"I just spoke with Waverly. Apparently Georgescu has more friends in town than we thought, and it looks like they've pieced things together. He's arranging an extraction for us now. We need to be ready to go in fifteen minutes." 

Solo chances a glance over his shoulder, out the window. Across the street, he sees an unremarkable yellow sedan glide to a stop beside the curb. Its incongruously tinted windows flash in the glare from the early morning sun. No one gets out. 

"We don't have fifteen minutes," he says. 

He grabs for his briefcase, leaving the open suitcase full of clothes at the foot of his bed where it lies (no great loss, since he'd been playing the part of a bumbling academic and hadn't exactly packed his best Zegna.) 

He turns around. "Gaby?"

"I'm ready," she says.

"Stay between us." He lifts up a hand to silence her before she can argue. "We're going to have to go it on foot for a bit, but I promise you've got first pick of a getaway car." 

She purses her lips at the naked and clumsy attempt at pacifying her, but she knows there's no time for them to squabble about it. 

"Peril?" But Illya is already moving. The prospect of action has stirred him out of whatever strange state he had been in, or at least driven him out of the embrace of one set of instincts and into another. He pulls the heavy panel curtains shut, turns on his heel and bolts from the room, telling them as he goes to meet him in the stairwell in twenty seconds. 

Gaby can already hear raised voices in the lobby when they start to make their way down from the seventh floor. She tries to estimate how many there are, but everything echoes in the stairwell. Less than ten, she guesses, but more than four. 

They'd come to Morocco lightly armed. Illya probably only has three or four sidearms in his kit, which is slung over his shoulder along with the rest of the "essentials": passports, cash, codekeys, assorted and sundry little gadgets. It's not enough to take on an organized gang of human traffickers, even if the prospect of getting into a firefight at nine o'clock in the morning wasn't uncivilized enough. 

They descend the stairs as swiftly and silently as they can. They've only made it a few flights when Illya suddenly darts forward, blocking their path and forcing Gaby and Solo to backpedal towards the wall. He gets off three shots with his Makarov before they've even regained their balance. 

Gaby's ears are ringing as they scramble down the rest of the way to the ground floor. They step over three bodies sprawled on the second floor landing. She nearly slips on something as she starts down the final flight. She doesn't look down. 

Solo hesitates before pushing through the door out into the hall, wanting to make sure that the coast is clear, but Illya shakes his head and pushes on.

"No time. Someone would have heard that." He leads them through a door marked "Authorized Personnel Only." 

Solo doesn't like the idea of going out the service entrance. If even a single one of these low-lifes had anything more than shit for brains it's the first place they would have had blocked off. He'd much prefer to take their chances with the lobby, to rely on the element of surprise and the fact that he's all but certain the men who have come after them have only their descriptions to go on. Up until last night, they've kept their heads down. No one has had any reason to keep tabs on them, and he knows they haven't been tailed.

But he's not about to speak up, first because they don't have time for second-guessing themselves, but mostly because the last thing he wants is to tell Illya what to do. Not now. This sort of thing is the Russian's speciality, anyway. 

The service entrance is in fact unguarded. Solo shakes his head but feels the first flush of relief begin to bloom in his chest; their pursuers are not as smart as he'd feared, then. 

They have to dash across the open ground of a wide avenue before they are able to find cover again, ensconced in the narrow lanes and cool, dusty shadows of the medina. Solo's just managed to orient them on his mental map of the city when they hear more raised voices behind them. 

"Guess they realized we checked out early," says Solo airily, directing them into an even narrower street. They pick up the pace. 

Illya clearly doesn't like the alleyway, glancing up continuously at the low, flat roofs that stretch alongside and above them as though he expects shots to rain down on them at any moment. Eventually they swerve into a broad, sunsoaked street that opens up on their left, and find themselves fighting their way through a crowd of shoppers flowing through an open market.

Solo relaxes. Even if Georgescu's associates could manage to track them this far, he thinks, there's not a great deal they can do in such a public place, in the presence of so many people. But he's forgetting, as he's sometimes prone to do, that the rules that govern his life as it is now are not in fact universal ones. Ten years in covert operations, ten years of honing his talents at subtlety to the sharpness of a scalpel's edge, and he's forgotten that the common criminal often couldn't care less about making a scene. 

There is more yelling behind them, a commotion which is amplified and ripples outward as their pursuers shove market patrons aside, tossing over tables and stands laden with goods. Solo isn't worried, doesn't change his pace. But then the morning air is broken open by the sound of gunfire. 

Solo hears six shots, but there may have been more. The jostle of the crowd becomes the press of a terrified mob, people screaming behind them and around them. At first they're only cries of surprise, of instinctual animal fear. But the cries don't stop, and their tenor shifts from the shrill sounds of shock to low, mounting wails of grief. Of pain. Someone has been hit. Likely more than one someone. 

Illya stutters in his stride. Gaby tries to turn around, but Solo takes her by the shoulders and steers her forward. 

"Keep moving." 

He reaches out a hand and plucks an ochre-dyed scarf from a stall to their right, which he drapes around Gaby's head and shoulders as they walk. Illya pulls his hat low over his face, hunches his shoulders, trying valiantly to make himself appear smaller. It doesn't work. Solo can't imagine it ever does. 

They follow the flow of the crowd out of the market until they're in an open square, the sprawling tangle of the medina laid out behind them. Solo hails them a cab. He hands the driver a fat stack of dirhams and mutters instructions in rudimentary Arabic. 

 

\--------------------------------

Twelve hours, one boat ride, and two taxis later they're in Tangier, in a dingy hotel room that Solo had booked ostensibly because the proprietor is an acquaintance of his and he can count on at least one day before they're given up to the authorities (or someone worse.) The real reason is that the place is _tiny_ , really tiny, and while he could find them better accommodations, he doesn't want to give Illya any place to hide, any dark corners for him to curl up in like a wounded dog. 

They throw down their gear, and Solo honestly wants nothing more than to take a shower, wash away the dust and the salt and the stink of adrenaline from his skin, and then find himself a soft spot of floor and go to sleep (there's only one bed, and he's not such a monster that he would deprive the lady of the use of it.) But they have business to attend to. 

Illya's restless, pacing the length of the room like a caged beast, apparently unaffected by having not gotten any sleep at all the night previous.

"I'm going to walk the block," he says. "I do not like this place. It's too exposed." He starts for the door. 

"Stop."

He regrets the tone of command, cringes at the way Illya flinches to hear it, but Solo has a hunch, no, he _knows_ , that if Illya walks out that door, he isn't coming back. 

Gaby comes back from the bathroom, only having scrubbed the dirt from her face. 

"Don't you think about leaving," she says sharply. "We're going to sort this out."

"Sort _what_ out?" Illya hisses, the tension in his face suddenly twisted into viciousness. "There is nothing to sort out." 

The look on his face, Solo thinks, is all too familiar: jaw clenched, brows drawn inward, eyes pale sparks of fury. But none of the other signals of imminent danger are present: his hands aren't shaking or curled into fists, his fingers not tapping out some incomprehensible rhythm. 

"I think there is," she says, more gently now. "I think something has been bothering you." 

"Those people in the marketplace," he says after a while, his voice so low as to be nearly inaudible, "they are dead because of me." 

Gaby has no patience for this. 

"Did you kill them? Did you pull the trigger? You're not responsible for the actions of those men and you know that. What happened to them was terrible, it is a tragedy, but it is in no way your fault." 

Illya huffs out a frustrated breath, bites his lip, momentarily stymied. But Gaby sees through this too. 

She goes straight to Illya's side, taking one of his hands in both of her own. 

"Hey, it's alright," she says. "It's okay." 

"You are not angry with me?" Illya asks. 

"No, no, Illya we're not angry. But whatever is going on with you, whatever this is, it's affecting all of us now. We need to know." 

Illya just shakes his head, mutely. But they're prepared to wait it out, prepared to coax the words out of him however they can. 

"I can't," he says at last. "I --" 

"You don't have to tell us everything," Solo says, stepping in, "We understand that there are things you can't just say outright. That's fine."

"But we need to know how to help you," Gaby continues. "We have to know what you _need_."

She shows her hand a little too much on the last word, her voice threatening to break as she strengthens her grip on his fingers. Illya's eyes bore into the floor, but then he looks up, his gaze locking onto Napoleon's. 

What he needs.

Solo knows what Illya needs, or at least thinks he needs. He's saying it with that look, which Solo can read as clearly as if Illya were broadcasting the words direct into his brain: he needs Solo to hit him again. And again. And again. Until Solo has restored some semblance of the balance which had been his refuge, until he has relaid the foundation of certainty on which Illya has built his life. 

But Solo knows, even as the insight races through him, that this is something he cannot give his partner, that it is a role he cannot play. He will not be another of the shadows out of Illya's past, another capricious invisible hand holding out carrot and stick. And he knows that Illya cannot help it, that it may just be the way he's wired now, but he's not going to let anyone else play that part either. 

Solo feels the gears of his mind start to whir the way they always do when he's in the middle of a heist that's threatening to go pear-shaped, a mission that's about to go wrong. There has to be a Plan B. There has to be a back door. There has to be _something_ else that can release the pressure that's building up in Illya's head, in his nerves, in his blood. 

But Gaby gets there first. She raises a hand to rest it on the back of Illya's neck, goes up on her tiptoes so she can bring her lips to his ear. 

"You did the right thing," she whispers. "You did so well, Illyusha." The diminutive rolls off her tongue as naturally as if she used it all the time.

It clearly takes the edge off: some of the tension seeps out of Illya's shoulders, the lines in his face begin to soften. But it isn't enough, and Solo already knows what's missing. He knows it has to come from him. 

"You did good, Peril," he says. "We're proud of you."

He says it offhand, but the reaction that gets him is altogether out of proportion with the intensity of his words. Illya makes a noise in the back of his throat that sounds like it's been veritably ripped from him. He slumps forward, barely keeping himself on his feet, a marionette whose strings have just been cut. 

Gaby rolls with it. Tightening her grip on Illya's hand, she leads him towards the bed on the far side of the room. 

She sits herself upright against the headboard, and coaxes Illya to settle in the middle of the mattress, maneuvering him so that his head rests in her lap. Her slender fingers card through his hair, coming away stained with the soot of the fire he set in the early hours of the morning. She fixes Solo with an impossibly eloquent glare. 

_Don't you dare run off. You did this. You're going to fix it._

Solo looks at the little tableau that they make, and he honestly can't think of a way to fit himself into it. Illya seems perfectly pacified now, at once doing his best not to luxuriate too much in the feel of Gaby's hands on him and yet arching up into her caresses just enough that Solo can tell how much he's ached for this. They don't need him here. 

But the thing is, he _wants_ to stay. And he's got to admit that he's interested to see what happens if he tries. Any aphorisms about cats notwithstanding, his own curiosity hasn't yet proved fatal. 

He moves to the other side of the bed and stretches himself out on the narrow strip of mattress that's been left to him. Illya's left hand lies open, palm up, on the sheet, and Solo picks it up. He feels a frisson of tension go through Illya's muscles, can tell that he's thinking about pulling away, but he doesn't. 

Solo holds Illya's wrist. He feels the other man's pulse under his thumb. Slowly, far more slowly than he would if this were some kind of seduction, if he planned on taking this anywhere, he traces little circles over the paper-thin skin just above the band of Illya's watch. He thinks he hears Illya hum in something like satisfaction. 

It takes five minutes of this, of Gaby's nails ghosting over his scalp, muttering soft nonsense in German, Solo's warmth pressed against the length of his left side, and Illya is out like a light. Gaby doesn't make any moves to get up, and the realization that they're going to spend the night like this, the three of them sleeping squeezed in a bed that probably wasn't even made for two, sends an unexpected and unaccustomed flutter through Napoleon's stomach. 

But for the moment, he's still very awake and verging on restless. He can't be entirely sure that Illya's really asleep, and he can't say that he won't wake up at the first sound they make, but he's willing to take the chance. 

"You didn't seem all that surprised," he says, "by Peril's...behavior, these last few days."

She shrugs. 

"You read his file." 

He did. Of course he wan't supposed to. In all honesty, he had been so distracted by the mention of an "Oedipus complex" and so caught up in figuring out how to make a joke out of it that wouldn't have gotten half his teeth knocked out that he had not really managed to absorb the rest. Frankly, he had scoffed at the notion of a "volatile personality disorder." You didn't need a doctor or a fancy diagnosis to know that Illya was nothing if not "volatile." 

"I suppose I'm just trying to connect the dots here," he says, by way of evasion. 

Gaby sighs. Of course Solo wouldn't understand, she thinks. He is _seamless,_ all his parts fitting together like a jigsaw. Spy, thief, seducer, sensualist, each facet feeding into the others, hand-in-glove. He may be hollow, but at least his shell is whole. He doesn't know what it means to have to don a mask you didn't craft yourself. 

By contrast, Illya is a conglomeration of contradictions like she has never seen before, and if she sometimes has a problem reconciling all she knows about the man into a single picture, a single personality, how much harder must it be for Illya himself?

She thinks about ice-cold featherlight hands, and the things she's seen them do, the unbelievable violence they're capable of. She thinks about the man who plays chess by himself (with himself? _against_ himself?) and she understands. 

(Solo likes to make cracks about it, asks "who's winning?" and chuckle at his own joke. She hates him for that, sometimes. Many things have happened over the last few months that she would never have predicted, but the upswelling of protectiveness she feels for a ten-foot tall Russian attack dog ranks pretty high on the list.) 

So Solo's trying to connect the dots? 

"So is he," she answers, at last. "I think that's essentially the problem." 

\---------------------------

Solo is the last one awake. Gaby drifted off a few hours back, and is now tucked under the blankets on Illya's right side, legs tangled with his. Illya has, perhaps subconsciously, perhaps not, curled himself around her until his broad back is facing Solo. He's thought about retreating to the floor or a chair, if only to escape the temptation to settle himself against Illya's back, to throw an arm across his chest, to...well, he knows what he'd like to do. But however far away sleep might seem he has stayed where he is, face up, perched precariously on the edge of the mattress.

Solo knows himself. He thinks about the look on Illya's face when he'd said "we're proud of you," he thinks about the _noise_ he'd made, and he knows that he'd like to see that face and hear that noise again. He knows he wants to draw them out from the other man properly, wants to earn them. 

He also knows that this is absolutely not the time, and that it won't be for a very long while yet. 

But that's alright. He's always had a particularly vivid imagination. So in the meantime, he imagines. 

_Illya holding Gaby up like she weighs nothing at all, her back to the wall, her eyes shut, while Solo watches from far enough away that he can see all the angles but close enough that he can still hear the desperate, half-choked sounds that Illya makes._

_The flush in Illya's cheeks when he has Solo's hands on him, Gaby's lips on his neck and his collarbone. The look in his eyes as he marvels at the feel of her skin as he ghosts over it with his fingertips, almost fearing to touch her._

_Illya on his knees. Solo doesn't even know what for, what comes next, but he just wants the composition painted indelibly on his mind's canvas._

With his mind full of thoughts of his partners, his vision a kaleidoscope of blonde hair against white sheets, brown eyes and huge hands and delicate limbs and broad shoulders, he finally succumbs to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wimped out on writing any proper smut, but rest assured that I imagine Our Heroes will get there in the end. This will be the last full chapter, with a short epilogue planned. I absolutely plan on exploring these themes in further fics, but this story felt like it had come to an organic conclusion and I decided not to fight it. 
> 
> And if anyone ever wants to discuss fic things (I've got a long modern-day AU in the works that I would love to gush about) or TMFU stuff generally, ya'll can find me on tumblr at catalpa-waltz.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the following prompt on the MFU Kink Meme: http://kinkfromuncle.dreamwidth.org/929.html?thread=290977
> 
> Not that anyone's interested, but the title comes from an amazing book on modern Russia by Peter Pomerantsev called Nothing is True and Everything is Possible which everyone needs to read.
> 
> tumblr: catalpa-waltz  
> (I don't blog much there anymore, but hmu if you want to talk!)


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